we kissed each other and Elsbeth led us out,
her wand high in the air.

And so my feet found the lost path to Arcady.

The next day I was called to the Pacific coast, and duty kept me there
till well into December. A few days before the date set for my return to
my home, a letter came from Elsbeth's mother.

"Our little girl is gone into the Unknown," she wrote--"that Unknown in
which she seemed to be forever trying to pry. We knew she was going, and
we told her. She was quite brave, but she begged us to try some way to
keep her till after Christmas. 'My presents are not finished yet,' she
made moan. 'And I did so want to see what I was going to have. You can't
have a very happy Christmas without me, I should think. Can you arrange
to keep me somehow till after then?' We could not 'arrange' either with
God in heaven or science upon earth, and she is gone."

She was only my little godchild, and I am an old maid, with no business
fretting over children, but it seemed as if the medium of light and
beauty had been taken from me. Through this crystal soul I had perceived
whatever was loveliest. However, what was, was! I returned to my home
and took up a course of Egyptian history, and determined to concern
myself with nothing this side the Ptolemies.

Her mother has told me how, on Christmas eve, as usual, she and
Elsbeth's father filled the stockings of the little ones, and hung them,
where they had always hung, by the fireplace. They had little heart for
the task, but they had been prodigal that year in their expenditures,
and had heaped upon the two tiny boys all the treasures they thought
would appeal to them. They asked themselves how they could have been
so insane previously as to exercise economy at Christmas time, and what
they meant by not getting Elsbeth the autoharp she had asked for the
year before.

"And now--" began her father, thinking of harps. But he could not
complete this sentence, of course, and the two went on passionately and
almost angrily with their task. There were two stockings and two piles
of toys. Two stockings only, and only two piles of toys! Two is very
little!

They went away and left the darkened room, and after a time they
slept--after a long time. Perhaps that was about the time the tiny boys
awoke, and, putting on their little dressing gowns and bed slippers,
made a dash for the room where the Christmas things were always placed.
The older one carried a candle which gave out a fe